I’m curious, for those of you who have used both SwissSys and WinTD, which one do you like better and why? (I’ve only used SwissSys since you have to submit NWSRS rated tournaments via SwissSys). Also, do the two programs always give the same pairings if set to the same settings (for example, if both are set to swiss pairings with the team restriction) or are some of the formulas different?
I haven’t tested out the formula differences between the two but I use SwissSys because Walter Brown can easily export the tournament into Krause format for submission to the FIDE Rating Server.
Personally I’ve found SwissSys more easy to use than WinTD.
The 2009 Version of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12099&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
The 2008 Version of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6684&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
The 2005 Version of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=420&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
A brief 2004 Version of this thread - not much content: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=119&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
The 2004 Version of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
The perennial version: Both have their fans. WinTD is better for Team play and may [or may not] make tough pairing calls better, SwissSys is for control over paper report formatting and ease of user interface. If you’re part of a local scholastic organization your choice may already be made for you. Unless you have odd circumstances, either should work fine. Using your brain while using the computer is still required.
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Well, THAT put a damper on the conversation.
(BTW, thanks for that.)
It really wasn’t my intention to shut down discussion, but it is a perennial topic, has been covered multiple times before, and if one is looking for original opinions then one should look at the history first. And I really do think either is just fine - for the ‘average’ TD it just comes down to personal preference.
But that doesn’t mean that every contrast and comparison has been made, nor that personal preferences can’t be voiced.
My problem is that I’ve only ever used WinTD in live tournaments. My start with WinTD was originally based on all other Bloomington TDs / organizations (BNASC, TCCC) using WinTD - I had to install it because BNASC uses it and I did the good thing and bought my own copy. I have used the SwissSys demo version just enough to realize the interface is different enough that it would take effort to master it - some years ago.
If I ever get a truly disposable $100 I might buy SwissSys, but it’s costly enough to have kept me from doing it so far. Until then I have to rely on others’ opinions.
A very excellent post. Think that about wraps it up. As a side note to your last sentence. Sometimes I have parents very angry at whatever–pairings, tie-breaks, etc. And sometime while they are “articulating” their opinions, the organizers in an attempt to support
me will say something like-- “Rob is only doing what the computer program tells him too.” While I truly do appreciate this support, I am
quick to correct, no I do check the pairings and tiebreaks, and I do understand the USCF rules. The computer program is a facilitator of
these rules, but as the chief td of the event, I take full responsibility." One of my main “cringe” points is hearing a TD state “this is what
the program says to do”
Rob Jones
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I agree TDs should understand pairing rules. Doing it by hand is a good way to learn or refresh the memory, but I suspect the time will soon come, if it hasn’t already, when the software is so heavily relied on, the skill is widely considered quaint but unnecessary. When’s the last time you did a division problem long hand without a calculator or Excel? I bet a lot of folks today wouldn’t know how, but also consider that skill outdated. I think we lose something when people no longer understand the logic behind a process, and just let the computer do the thinking for us.
I’m all for using computers for efficiency, but it seems to me we too often let technology become the master instead of the servant.
Knowing how to pair without a program helps determine whether or not the program’s settings are correct, and what to change if they aren’t. With WinTD I have generally found that when its pairings are inferior I could simply fix the settings and get the best pairings. The key to doing that though was knowing enough about pairings to recognize that they actually were inferior.
H. G. Wells took this concept to an extreme limit with the Eloi.
And then there’s Clarke’s law: Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.
At the risk of taking this thread well off-topic (but addressing the last couple posts), as a new TD in a small club I completely rely on the software (older version of SwissSys) to make pairings, and its judgement is final. Why?
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The rules for pairing a Swiss are not exactly designed to be solved in a clean algorithmic way. The lack of freeware pairing programs should be a clue in that regard. I was looking to write a program to do this (and still might), but it’s not a trivial task even if you apply some of the variations meant to simplify things.
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First round in our Monday night tournament starts at 7:30pm, and people show up at 7:29:30. We cannot go past 10pm (in our current location especially), so it is important that the round start on time.
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In tournaments that take multiple Mondays to finish, I cannot pre-pair the next round since I have no guarantee of who will show up. Many are good at giving notice, but it’s not across the board - and all it takes is one person in the upper half to not show up (or a new person to join late) and pairings can look completely different. Pairings must be made right before the games begin.
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If someone complains about a pairing it would take at least 10 minutes to go by hand through the justification of why it works. Given the 3 points above, that’s not feasible. Pointing at the computer screen and saying “because it said so” takes 5 seconds, and the round can start.
Obviously the situation in a small club with low EF and no cash prizes is different from a “real” tournament.
The point was not that computers shouldn’t be used.
TDs who do not know how pairing works are dependent on the program doing it correctly. and are probably clueless about what to do if it doesn’t.
And if the TD doesn’t know how pairing works, how does the TD know what settings to use? The default settings may not always produce the ‘best’ pairings (depending on how you define ‘best’.)
As I said in another context, there is no substitute for a well-trained thoughtful TD.
I have used both, though in the last several years mainly WinTD. I know that it can be forced to display the pair score/logic and that of alternatives - not sure if SwissSys does that. Once had a parent mad about a pairing made by an event TD (they were right that the chosen pairing was “rough” on their son - but the primary alternative pairing was “rough” on about 4 others - I don’t recall the reasons for the “roughness” but WinTD seemed to recognize the path with the fewest issues) and we offered to show the parent WinTD’s scores - but the parent wouldn’t listen and withdrew their son from the tournament after the round.
SwissSys does have the option to show pairing logic.
Thanks.
A sad, typical, yet unfortunate story. How many kids suffer from illogical dominating parents, whose only perspective
is what shapes their kids world.
Rob Jones
Up until the past several years on the board, I had been a long-time beta tester for Thad Suits going back to Windows version #1. I would use it in big events, find bugs, report them and get immediate fixes. During one World Open, using a X.00 just released version, I found so many bugs that during the week of the tournament it moved to .01, .02, .03. .04 and .05.
Swiss Sys has always been a friendlier environment within which to work. WinTD has never been easy to use and reminds me of old Windows 3.1 programs. Swiss Sys has always had full featured Windows printing functions and playing around with the settings produces wall-charts that were almost identical to old USCF produced printed wallcharts. Many years ago I asked Thad to develop a PGN module that created PGN files based on the round by round pairings. That has been a wonderful feature for anyone recording tournament games.
For several years Carol Jarecki did an experiment during the US Championships. She would hand-pair the tournament using pairing cards (Any TD that does not know how to do this should learn. I was helping a club and local TD practice for their exams and they didn’t understand transpositions until we made pairing cards and they were physically able to make the switches with cards. Only then did the concept really register because it is called transposition because of moving cards around).
She would then put the results into Swiss Sys and WinTD to see how they would pair using FIDE style pairings. The first several rounds were pretty similar but WinTD did a slightly better job later on matching Carol’s FIDE pairings. She was sending me all three files and I found the same thing. I know that Thad is working on the FIDE module along with other improvements and hopefully version 9 will be amazing.
Mike
IIRC (and I well may not be) Tim Just used to coordinate something similar during the National Open (?).
It would be tougher in a larger event like the National Open. The US Championship had perhaps 24 players, National Open might have 50-80 players in Open.